Sooners have a path to winning the National Championship, but it requires doing what they couldn’t last season
The Oklahoma Sooners can be National Champions, but they will have to run the ball a lot better.
The Oklahoma Sooners enter 2026 with legitimate National Championship aspirations, but the path to a title runs straight through one glaring weakness from last season: the rushing attack. Oklahoma’s run game ranked among the worst in the country in 2025, dragging down an offense that couldn’t keep pace with the defense.
The Sooners’ defense carried them to the College Football Playoff, but that was the ceiling without a functional ground game. If the run game improves even marginally, this team has the talent to compete for a national title. Quarterback John Mateer has the talent everyone recognizes, and that conversation has been beaten into the ground. The real question is whether the Sooners can run the football well enough to complement him and a defense that should again be elite.
The numbers that make the case
Dusty Dvoracek recently appeared on the Oklahoma Breakdown podcast and laid out a stat that frames the entire discussion.
“Since 2007, every national champion has averaged at least 165 rushing yards per game. Take out 2019 LSU, one of the greatest passing offenses ever, and the floor is closer to 180 yards. Most champions were at 200-plus yards per game. In 2025, Oklahoma averaged 118 rush yards per game, which was 13th in the SEC.”
That gap between 118 yards per game and the 165-yard minimum is enormous. Oklahoma’s defense proved it can drag this team into the College Football Playoff. We saw it last season. The defense quite literally carried the Sooners into the bracket, and that’s as far as it went. To win a game, to win two games in the College Football Playoff, you need offense. And that offense has to come through the ground game.
Nobody is predicting the Sooners will replicate what 2019 LSU did through the air with Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Justin Jefferson. That’s not a reasonable expectation for any program, let alone one that struggled to move the ball last season. The path forward is on the ground.
The pieces are in place for improvement
Oklahoma has addressed the rushing problem from multiple angles. Tight end blocking was a significant issue in 2025, and the Sooners brought in Hayden Hansen and Rocky Beers to fix it. Both are strong run blockers who should open up lanes that didn’t exist last year.
The running back room looks different, too. Jonathan Hatton arrives as a true freshman who many expect to see the field early. Tory Blaylock should be healthy after missing time, and the rest of the running back room is reportedly at full strength. Add in Mateer’s ability to run the ball himself when healthy, and the Sooners have the personnel to make a significant jump.
The stakes are clear
The formula is simple. If the defense performs at a level relatively similar to what we saw last season and the offense becomes even slightly competent on the ground, who is stopping this team? The Sooners don’t need to be a 200-yard-per-game rushing juggernaut, though that would be ideal.
They need to cross that 165-yard threshold and give their defense a partner, not a passenger. The talent is there. The additions have been made. Now Oklahoma has to prove it on the field. We’ll have to see what happens.
